Lois McMaster Bujold on Justice

"I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him."

"And you could just watch men begin to see what he told them they were seeing, whether it was there or not."

"Just like swatting flies with a laser cannon. The aim’s a bit tricky, but it sure takes care of the flies."

"I propose a treaty. You can have all the rest of the women in the universe. I just want this one."

"I’ve got forward momentum. There’s no virtue in it. It’s just a balancing act. I don’t dare stop."

"There are weapons all around us here, we just don’t recognize them because we call them “tools."

"Permanent justice is well worth a temporary offended protest, I can assure you, Lieutenant."

"If you’re just now finding out that this world is unjust, well, you’re behind the times."

"The laws of physics took precedence over heroic intent for the next couple of seconds."

"Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie-detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal. That’s all."

"“I will consider this contention,” said Greenlaw dryly, with the For about ten seconds, after which I shall toss it out the nearest airlock hanging unspoken."

"The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them."

"It just happens to be very important to me to win with the hand I was dealt."

"He said that permitting private judgments to turn my duty in the smallest matter would be just like getting a little bit pregnant—that the consequences would very soon get beyond me."

"Between justice and genocide there is, in the long run, no middle ground."

"I don’t want power. I just object to idiots having power over me."

"As long as I’m going to commit a crime, let it be a perfect one."

"I wouldn’t be lying. I’d just be editing my report for length."

"They’re my officers, dammit, not my harem, Miles’s thought snarled silently. But no Barrayaran officer of Destang’s age would see it that way. Some attitudes couldn’t be changed; they just had to be outlived."

"We don’t just march on the future, we charge it."

"Beware of wishing for justice. You might get it."

"The trouble with oaths of the form, death before dishonor, is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into just two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn."

"The building had a strange hermetically-sealed flavor to it, redolent to Miles’s experienced nose as paranoid security in action. Ah, yes, a planet’s embassy is that planet’s soil. Feels just like home."

"The arrow of justice flies one way."

"All in all, it was probably a good thing these youths had no political interests. They were just the sort of people who started revolutions but could not finish them, their idealism betrayed by their incompetence."

"It wasn’t, he swore, that he picked up so many women. Compared to Ivan, he was practically celibate. It was just that he never put any down. The accumulation could become downright embarrassing, over a long enough time-span."

"Mercy from the Father and the Mother, mercy from the Sister and the Brother, Mercy from the Bastard, five times mercy, High Ones, we beseech you."… Mercy, High Ones. Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice."

"“Do me the honor of grasping that I may just possibly know what I’m doing!” I wish to hell I knew what I was doing. Intuition was nothing but the subconscious processing of subliminal clues, he was fairly sure, but I feel it in my bones made too uncomfortably thin a public defense for his actions."

"People have some very odd illusions about power. Mostly it consists of finding a parade and nipping over to place yourself at the head of the band. Just as eloquence consists of persuading people of things they desperately want to believe. Demagoguery, I suppose, is eloquence sliding to some least moral energy level."